http://www.kuar.org/kuarnews/18329-fire-at-kuar-transmitter-site-may-tak e-several-days-to-get-back-on-air.html
UPDATE: We are now back on the air at low power with a standby transmitter. This should serve some of our listening area. Please help us confirm how far our signal is or isn't going by leaving a message below saying where you live and whether or not you can hear us. We appreciate the community's support as we work on the issue. In the meantime, you can listen to KUAR online by clicking here. Or, you can stream the station on your mobile device and connect to KUAR's programming that way. KUAR went off the air around 5:30 p.m. on Saturday. The station's engineer was called and he went to the transmitter site on Shinall Mountain in Little Rock. When he got to the site, the engineer discovered smoke coming out of the building. He tried to go into the building, but the lock that was supposed to be on the door was gone and had been replaced with a new lock. The engineer was therefore unable to open the door. The Little Rock Fire Department arrived at the scene and broke open the new lock. The fire did not take long to put out but did do a significant amount of damage while it was burning. The transmitter, which was purchased in 2007, was severely damaged. KUAR General Manager Ben Fry says it's uncertain at this point whether the equipment can be salvaged. Fry says the equipment was insured. Considering the suspicious nature of the fire and the amount of damage, a fire marshall was called out to investigate. At the scene, officials also discovered part of the fence around the transmitter building had been pulled back and that copper from the tower was missing. The fire department continues to investigate the incident and will file a report in the next few days with its conclusions. "These are very odd circumstances. We don't know exactly what's going on, but it seems pretty suspicious," says Fry. Fry says there have been no threats made on the station. KUAR was slated to move to a new tower site soon. KATV Channel 7 in Little Rock, in collaboration with landowner Deltic Timber, donated space at its new tower facility for public radio's use. Construction on that project was set to begin in about three months. "It looks like we're probably going to have to move that up and go a little bit faster with that. That is probably where we will end up getting the station back at full power," says Fry. _______________________________________________ Medianews mailing list [email protected] http://lists.etskywarn.net/mailman/listinfo/medianews
